Take your europoison. You’ll feel better later

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This crisis won’t kill the euro, so Britain should help with the bailout now to avoid a deadlier bill in future

After his trial, Socrates was put to death by being forced to drink poison. His more modern namesake, José Sócrates, the Portuguese Prime Minister, has just been put to political death because his parliament would not drink the fiscal poison demanded of it by the country’s international creditors. The latter will soon include the European Union if Portugal is, as markets expect, forced to accept an EU rescue package. And this occurred just two days before EU leaders triumphantly agreed to reinforce their financial lifeboat service, the European Stability Mechanism, giving it an impressive €700 billion (£615 billion) fund to